Yt structure

yt-structure

Overview

Turn a spoken or web source into a faithful, scannable, citable Markdown file for LLM ingestion.

Core principle: structure and clean phrasing only — never paraphrase substance, never invent content, and flag what you can't verify instead of guessing.

When to use

• A YouTube video, conference talk, podcast, or lecture → a cleaned .md.
• A blog post / web article you want as faithful text (not a summary).
• Adding a source to your knowledge library (a target library folder, an OKF/RAG bundle — at Pesty this is usually the internal Agents library).

When NOT to use:

• A messy meeting transcript with crosstalk (Gemini/Fathom) → that's a separate internal cleanup process (de-fragment turns), not covered by this skill.
• You just want a quick summary — this produces a faithful structured document, not a digest.

Step 1 — Ingest the raw source

Video / talk / podcast:

Use the bundled script at scripts/yt-transcript (relative to this skill folder):

scripts/yt-transcript <youtube-url> [output-dir]

Writes a clean <slug>.txt (strips YouTube's rolling-window caption duplication) and prints the path. Run it with no args for usage. Prerequisite: yt-dlp (brew install yt-dlp or pipx install yt-dlp). Do NOT use Tactiq, web tools, or youtube-transcript-api — they waste tokens and break sentences.

If the script isn't available in this environment, fall back to the raw command it wraps:

yt-dlp --skip-download --write-auto-sub --sub-lang 'en.*,en' --sub-format vtt -o '%(id)s.%(ext)s' <url>

then strip the timestamp/tag markup and deduplicate repeated caption lines yourself.

Web article:

curl -sL "<url>" | pandoc -f html -t markdown_strict

Use this for blog posts — agent web-fetch tools summarize prose and lose faithful text. (Official docs pages usually come through a web-fetch tool fine.) Prerequisite: pandoc (install via brew/apt) — or any equivalent HTML→Markdown converter works.

Step 2 — Structure into a sibling .md

Write <slug>.md next to the raw source, same slug. Follow these conventions exactly:

• Header block: # Title, then **Speaker:** / **Author:** line, then **Source:** <url>.
• ## headers at topic transitions; ### for sub-beats.
• Strip filler (um, uh, "kind of", "you know", redundant so/well/right, doubled phrases). Phrasing cleanup only.
• > [Visual: …] blockquotes for on-screen references (clips, slides, diffs, B-roll, demos).
• Verbatim quotes / cited passages → blockquotes; bold the takeaways.
• End with ## Recap.
• ### Editor's note at the end: list proper-noun corrections you made + any unresolved [?] flags.
• Multi-speaker: preserve who-said-what; never invert authorship (don't credit a listener/agreer with the speaker's point).
• Flag, don't guess: garbled names/tools/companies get a [?]. Verify the big factual flags (names, tools, claims) with a web search before de-flagging.

Example output (illustrating the conventions above):

# Why Most SaaS Onboarding Fails
**Speaker:** Jane Rivera
**Source:** https://youtube.com/watch?v=abc123

## The core problem

### Users never reach the "aha moment"
**Most churn happens before value is ever felt.** Rivera argues teams over-invest
in visual polish and under-invest in the first five minutes of use.

> [Visual: funnel chart showing 80% drop-off before day two]

> "We rebuilt onboarding around one metric: time to first real result."

She attributes the framework to Kathy Sierra [?] — spelling unconfirmed.

## Recap
Ship a narrow, guided first-run path; measure time-to-value, not signups.

### Editor's note
Corrected "Rivera" (garbled as "Rivero" in captions). Unresolved: `[?]` on
"Kathy Sierra" — not yet verified via web search.

Step 3 — Add to the library (if building one)

Append the new file to the library's INDEX.md / index.md. If the library is an LLM-wiki / OKF bundle, also update the concept pages the source touches (don't just add a file) — follow that library's CLAUDE.md maintenance loop.

Common mistakes

Mistake	Fix
Tactiq / youtube-transcript-api for captions	Use scripts/yt-transcript (dedups, LLM-ready)
A web-fetch tool for a blog article	It summarizes — use curl … | pandoc for faithful text
Paraphrasing or compressing substance	Clean phrasing only; keep the content
Guessing a garbled proper noun	[?] flag + a web search to confirm
Inverting authorship in multi-speaker talks	Preserve attribution; agreement ≠ authorship
Skipping the Recap / Editor's note	Both are required closers

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